Swedish ISP protects customers from surveillance with free VPN

Last month I reported on the case of Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP that is resisting the country’s revival of its data retention law. Bahnhof CEO John Karlung said at the time that he had a “Plan B” in mind that would mitigate the effects of storing customer data for the benefit of spies and law enforcement, and here it is: free VPN.

On Sunday, Bahnhof said it would comply with a court’s November 24 deadline for storing customers’ communications data — in particular, details of which websites they’re visiting — but would at the same time start giving all those customers a way to anonymize their traffic, in the form of free access to a virtual private network called LEX Integrity.

As a result, the data Bahnhof will collect (and store in its ex-nuclear-bunker data center) will become meaningless for the purpose of surveillance — assuming customers take up…